Beschreibung:

Psalter, in Latin, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Flanders, final quarter 13th century] A charming 13th-century Flemish Psalter decorated with lively initials, with very early French Celestine provenance . 103 x 70mm. vi + 177 + iv, 18 lines, some contemporary gathering signatures, illuminated and penwork initials throughout, eight historiated initials on burnished gold grounds, small cross cut in relief into lower border of one leaf (lacking a leaf after Calendar, likely with full-page initial opening 'Beatus Vir', the text after f.166v completed in a later, 14th-century hand, and containing a rubric at the end introducing an Office of the Virgin for Celestine use, now lacking or in a separate volume, some small losses of pigment to historiated initials, some marginal soiling and small area of loss at top of empty border of last leaf). Late 19th-century brown morocco gilt, fitted beige cloth-covered case. Provenance : A late 13th-century Flemish production that by the 14th century had evidently found its way into a Celestine monastery: rubric at the end of the text, added along with the final 10 leaves of the manuscript in a 14th-century hand: 'Incipit officium beate marie secundum usum fratrum celestinorum'. The Celestines (founded in 1244) only took their name after 1294 when their patron, Pietro Morrone, was consecrated as Pope Celestine V. His death on 19 May 1296 is commemorated in an early addition in red to the calendar as 'Petrus Celestini', as is his translation on 15 February 1327. The calendar is well populated in a number of early hands (the latest adding the feast of Peter of Luxembourg [d.1433]). Many of the saints are French (an early addition includes the feast of St Louis), some are Belgian (Gertude of Nivelles and Waudru of Mons, for example), but there seems to be a preponderance of saints local to the vicinity of Lyon: Sts Artaldus (7 January, bishop of Belley, d.1206), and Desiderius (February 11, bishop of Vienne in the 6th-7th century) and the later addition of Austrobertus (bishop of Vienne in the 8th century), which is perhaps why the manuscript has previously been described as a Lyon production – F.F. Rice, most likely the 19th-century American printer and typographer: his inscription inside front cover and on verso of first endleaf (mostly erased) – Stockholm Auktionsverk, 21 June 2016, lot 6023. Content : Calendar, ff.1-6v, Psalms 1-150, followed by canticles and prayers, including the Magnificat , Nunc Dimittis , the pseudo-Athanasian creed, Quicumque vult , and ending with a Litany of Saints and prayers ff.7-177v. The provincial and lively historiated initials are on ff.29v, 44, 56, 57, 87, 103, 105, 120v